Lionel Shriver - A Perfectly Good Family: A Novel (P.S.)

Perfectly Good Family

A Perfectly Good Family

LIONEL SHRIVER

T

A son could bear complacently the death of his father, while the loss of his inheritance might drive him to despair. Machiavelli, O D ON AND P EGGY S HRIVER
from whom, on balance, I have inherited more strengths than foiblesthe most parents could hope for any childThe Prince

Contents Epigraph iii
Dont tell me, said the taxi driver, rubber-necking at the 1
I had Truman lug my bags to my old room 12
In my bedroom, I could make out snippets of conversation 25

As we collected back on Hillsborough, Truman loitered a few 38

I thought about Mordecais false dilemma, Truman admitted as we 56

That Thursday morning the postbox was stuffed with stiff square 71

I was accustomed to running messages from Heck-Andrews to Mordecais 88

Chewing peppermint to obscure the incriminating caraway on my breath, 103
I sighed. So are we doing the whole turkey number? 118
We were notified the will was out of probate. Hugh 133

I fell asleep in that chair, and dreamt about my 153
Walking in the back door two days later, I recalled 164

My presence had been commanded because one of Mordecais braids 176
I had always got a child-like buzz out of riding 190
I did not get home early. Mordecai kept us on 204

Truman returned from Hanover Trust ebullient, a welcome relief from 216
That night I dreamt about the auction. Not the house 228
You call wrecking my electric drill and a $300 television 241

After Mordecai left, our capacious kitchen closed in, the long 249

At Rex Hospital, Truman and I filled in Mordecais
admission 265

P.S. Insights, Interviews & More 279 About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Lionel Shriver
Copyright
About the Publisher Dont tell me, said the taxi driver, rubber-necking at the formidable Victorian manor. Your mothers Norman Bates.

My mothers dead, I said. Harsh, but the information was so fresh for me, only two weeks old, that I was still repeating it to myself.

Dont you strain yourself, Missy. He lunged from the front seat to take the luggage from me: two leather monsters and a bulging carryon. Id been overweight at Heathrow, and lucky that in November the plane was not too full.
You want, Ill haul these to the porch
Not at all, I said. My brother likes to give me a hand. He always has.
I pulled out a wad of dollars crumpled with fivers, unsure of the form for tipping taxis in North Carolina. An ostensible native, I clung to any ignorance about Raleigh as proof that I no longer belonged here. Skint most of my adult life, I reminded myself I would have more money soon and forced myself to hand over twenty per cent. The generosity didnt come naturally. McCreas are Scots-Presbyterian stock; I have stingy genes.
But youre spot on about the house, I nodded upwards. It does look like Psycho , all right. The neighbourhood children all think its haunted.
And wasnt it? Handing over the bills, I thumbed Alexander Hamilton; after five years of starchy London tenners, a dollar felt like pyjamas.
Or The Addams Family , mehbe. Take care now, maam. Hope your brothers a muscly guy. Those cases is killers.
Hes pretty powerful. I frowned. Since I still envisaged Truman as a delicate, timid tag-along about two feet high, that
he was a beefy man of thirty-one who lifted weights in his attic living room was disconcerting.
The cab ploughed down Blount Street, leaving me by chattel that would have been, until a fortnight before, all I owned. I turned to face what else I owned: a great, gaunt mansion built just after the Civil War.
There was no denying its magnificence. I had shown friends in London pictures of my family: my dark, glamorously beautiful mother in the days when she was genuinely happy instead of pretending to be; my father sporting his lopsided, hangdog grin as he accepted another award from the NAACP; my little brother Truman when he was photographed by the Raleigh Times throwing himself in front of a bulldozer; though I had no pictures, I discovered, of my older brother. None of these snaps made the slightest impression. Yet when I showed them a picture of my house, faces lit, hands clapped, eyebrows lifted. For the English, Heck-Andrews was everything a Southern residence was meant to be: remote, anachronistic, both inviting and forbidding at the same time. It fulfilled their tritest expectations, though I received complaints that there was no Spanish moss. Thats in South Carolina, Id explain. And then we would get on to why I didnt seem to have a Southern accent, and Id be reassured that tell-tale traces had been eradicated.
Even in the last light of the day I could see the clapboard was flaking; so the failing manila paint was now my problem. It was apparent from the pavement that the ceilings of the first two floors were vaulting, all very exhilarating except they were murderously dear to heat, and the price of oil was now, I supposed, my problem as well. Yet paint and heat were only a third my responsibilityand this in itself would shortly become my biggest problem.
It was the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, a holiday which I only ever remembered in Raleigh-Durham, where gift shops were flogging pop-up pilgrim books; letting this exclusively American holiday nearly slip by unnoticed gave me a sense of accomplishment. I zipped up my jacket. No doubt the English didnt picture the South in winter, but North Carolina has one, albeit mild. In fact, I remembered dressing for school huddled by the floor vent, stuffing my bunched knee-highs by its breath to pre-warm my socks. My parents were McCreas, too, and their
remedy to the heating problem was all too simple.
I left the bags on the pavement and strode towards the broad, intricately ornamented front porch that skirted the mansion. This opulent, gregarious-looking expanse with a swing on one end was designed for mint juleps; but my parents had been teeto-tallers and, rather than recall long languid summer nights with fireflies and low laughter, I pictured squeaking morosely with Truman on the swing, frantic for my parents to go to bed. We hadnt been very nice to them. Ordinarily on one of my visits home as I approached this same front door Id be bracing myself for my mothers protracted, claim-laying embracewhen the more I stiffened, the harder she would squeeze. Once my father died, her hugs had become only longer and tighter and were laced with hysteria. Now I was spared. A dubious reprieve.
We rarely entered through the front door, more comfortable with the side entrance into the kitchen. Ringing the bell, I touched the cold curlicued polygonal panes in the door, one of which had been replaced with plain window glass. The asymmetry never failed to vex Truman. But because the original had been shattered when my older brother put his arm through itmy father had been chasing him through the house to force him to turn down the volume of Three Dog NightI treasured the flaw. There werent many signs of Mordecai left here.
Corlis!
In the open door my brother hugged me. He knew how: his hands were firm on my back and he waited a single beat during which he was plausibly thinking about being glad to see me and then he let go. I didnt take these capacities for granted.
You should have let us pick you up.
Not during rush hour. The consideration was unlike me. When I gestured to my luggage on the pavement, I thought I was doing Truman a favour by allowing him to heave it in.
What have you got in these things, a dead body?
You might say that.
I thought you were only here for a few days. He muttered, Girls! with a smile.
I watched my little brother. He was broad, though to say stocky would suggest fat, which he was not. He liked carrying suitcases because he was a practical person and enjoyed putting his muscles to more beneficial use than for sandbagged press-ups. His